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See the Old Lady Decently
See the Old Lady B.S. See the Old Lady Viking FIRST First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Viking Press, 1975. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is like new. Dust jacket is like new. A lovely copy of this landmark and scarce novel by Johnson. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.Seller 353736 Literature We Buy Books! Collections - Libraries - Estates - Individual Titles. Message us if you have books to sell!
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1975
About the author
B.S. Johnson
40 books131 followersB. S. Johnson (Bryan Stanley Johnson) was an English experimental novelist, poet, literary critic and film-maker.
Johnson was born into a working class family, was evacuated from London during World War II and left school at sixteen to work variously as an accounting clerk, bank junior and clerk at Standard Oil Company. However, he taught himself Latin in the evenings, attended a year's pre-university course at Birkbeck College, and with this preparation, managed to pass the university exam for King's College London.
After he graduated with a 2:2, Johnson wrote a series of increasingly experimental and often acutely personal novels. Travelling People (1963) and Albert Angelo (1964) were relatively conventional (though the latter became famous for the cut-through pages to enable the reader to skip forward), but The Unfortunates (1969) was published in a box with no binding (readers could assemble the book any way they liked) and House Mother Normal (1971) was written in purely chronological order such that the various characters' thoughts and experiences would cross each other and become intertwined, not just page by page, but sentence by sentence. Johnson also made numerous experimental films, published poetry, and wrote reviews, short stories and plays.
A critically acclaimed film adaptation of the last of the novels published while he was alive, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (1973) was released in 2000.
At the age of 40, increasingly depressed by his failure to succeed commercially, and beset by family problems, Johnson committed suicide. Johnson was largely unknown to the wider reading public at the time of his death, but has a growing cult following. Jonathan Coe's 2004 biography Like a Fiery Elephant (winner of the 2005 Samuel Johnson prize) has already led to a renewal of interest in Johnson's work.
Johnson was born into a working class family, was evacuated from London during World War II and left school at sixteen to work variously as an accounting clerk, bank junior and clerk at Standard Oil Company. However, he taught himself Latin in the evenings, attended a year's pre-university course at Birkbeck College, and with this preparation, managed to pass the university exam for King's College London.
After he graduated with a 2:2, Johnson wrote a series of increasingly experimental and often acutely personal novels. Travelling People (1963) and Albert Angelo (1964) were relatively conventional (though the latter became famous for the cut-through pages to enable the reader to skip forward), but The Unfortunates (1969) was published in a box with no binding (readers could assemble the book any way they liked) and House Mother Normal (1971) was written in purely chronological order such that the various characters' thoughts and experiences would cross each other and become intertwined, not just page by page, but sentence by sentence. Johnson also made numerous experimental films, published poetry, and wrote reviews, short stories and plays.
A critically acclaimed film adaptation of the last of the novels published while he was alive, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (1973) was released in 2000.
At the age of 40, increasingly depressed by his failure to succeed commercially, and beset by family problems, Johnson committed suicide. Johnson was largely unknown to the wider reading public at the time of his death, but has a growing cult following. Jonathan Coe's 2004 biography Like a Fiery Elephant (winner of the 2005 Samuel Johnson prize) has already led to a renewal of interest in Johnson's work.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 1, 2011
The more mass-market drivel that gets churned out on production lines, the more stuffed bookstores are with nine-book series on teenage vampires, the more absurd B.S. Johnson’s suicide seems. Today, Johnson’s books would struggle to find their way into print. No publishing house would take House Mother Normal from an unknown. Nor have the sense of adventure and reckless fiscal guts to bind The Unfortunates. In the sixties and seventies all his work (poems and plays too) were in print.
So if he were alive today, he’d probably have to kill himself.
See the Old Lady Decently was part of the proposed Matrix Trilogy, a biographical account of his mother’s life and a rumination on the state of the British Empire since the WWI battles at Ypres. This is his final final book and remains out of print and in the shadow of Christie Malry's Own Double-entry, which many (including me) mistake as his last. (And which is clearly the superior work).
As a book it isn’t Johnson at his best: the experiment doesn’t have the same exuberance, skill or humour as his other novels. There are no clues as to Johnson’s own mental decline here, despite the usual fourth wall moments—if anything this book is lighter and more heartfelt than his spikier efforts. What shines through is a love for his mother, his London home, and his country. And, inevitably, Laurence Sterne.
So if he were alive today, he’d probably have to kill himself.
See the Old Lady Decently was part of the proposed Matrix Trilogy, a biographical account of his mother’s life and a rumination on the state of the British Empire since the WWI battles at Ypres. This is his final final book and remains out of print and in the shadow of Christie Malry's Own Double-entry, which many (including me) mistake as his last. (And which is clearly the superior work).
As a book it isn’t Johnson at his best: the experiment doesn’t have the same exuberance, skill or humour as his other novels. There are no clues as to Johnson’s own mental decline here, despite the usual fourth wall moments—if anything this book is lighter and more heartfelt than his spikier efforts. What shines through is a love for his mother, his London home, and his country. And, inevitably, Laurence Sterne.
June 9, 2024
I am a devotee of experimental literature and B.S. Johnson was one of the greatest of all experimental writers. He wrote seven novels and I hope to read them all. This is the fifth I have read so far; it is not easy to obtain because it's perhaps his least renowned work, a book that in fact is the first part of a trilogy he was planning that never happened. His death robbed us of the second and third volumes. Was this a major loss? It is hard to know.
Certainly I have to admit that in some ways the book is a failure. It held my attention less than any other of Johnson's novels. It is patterned on a complex structure that involves various separate threads and presumably these threads would be drawn tighter together as the trilogy progressed, but in this first volume they remain quite apart, and this isn't necessarily a problem, it is merely that one of these threads is not at all engrossing, although in theory it should be. This is the thread in which Johnson presents an ongoing summary of British history but 'universalized' by the expedient of removing names and dates. Lacking sufficient context, this multi-stage summary becomes vague, mundane and seemingly of no significant relevance to the rest of the book.
Thankfully, Johnson's talents shine through in the other threads. The sections dealing with the tyrant chef Virrels are superb. The personal memoirs are poignant. The philosophical reflections on life, love, literature and the very act of writing are thought-provoking and neat. The brief poems have an accumulative power. Johnson at his best is tremendous, his prose stylistically and thematically refutes the various unfair criticisms that have been levelled at him (pretentiousness, pomposity, empty experimentation) and he emerges as a smart, tragic, comedic figure of linguistic brilliance, even in this, perhaps his weakest novel.
Certainly I have to admit that in some ways the book is a failure. It held my attention less than any other of Johnson's novels. It is patterned on a complex structure that involves various separate threads and presumably these threads would be drawn tighter together as the trilogy progressed, but in this first volume they remain quite apart, and this isn't necessarily a problem, it is merely that one of these threads is not at all engrossing, although in theory it should be. This is the thread in which Johnson presents an ongoing summary of British history but 'universalized' by the expedient of removing names and dates. Lacking sufficient context, this multi-stage summary becomes vague, mundane and seemingly of no significant relevance to the rest of the book.
Thankfully, Johnson's talents shine through in the other threads. The sections dealing with the tyrant chef Virrels are superb. The personal memoirs are poignant. The philosophical reflections on life, love, literature and the very act of writing are thought-provoking and neat. The brief poems have an accumulative power. Johnson at his best is tremendous, his prose stylistically and thematically refutes the various unfair criticisms that have been levelled at him (pretentiousness, pomposity, empty experimentation) and he emerges as a smart, tragic, comedic figure of linguistic brilliance, even in this, perhaps his weakest novel.
September 27, 2018
No less deserving of republication than his other novels. Particularly as Well Done God! made it to shelves, it seems a shame that reading his final novel requires access to a very good library. I don't want to say too much - if you like Johnson so far, do ask at your local.
March 17, 2017
4.5/5
November 3, 2015
I read this strange and wonderful book in a university library where I wasn't allowed to take it out as I wasn't a student there. That seems suitable though as he writes a lot of this as though he is going to get his wrist slapped for putting words on the page.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews